Trading Digital Rights and Reselling Content

With so much fear and uncertainty regarding online piracy, content producers and sellers have many issues they face beyond merely promoting and delivering their works.  Increasingly, we see creative new approaches to selling media that generate sustainable businesses.  The idea that buyers might resell works to their own networks - to the benefit of the original Seller - leads to the notion that selling rights to content will become more valuable than the files we deliver now.

Frederic Filoux has some powerful thoughts about trading rights to digital media:

The shift from paid-for files to rights for books or digital contents won’t come easily. As a telco exec told me last week: ‘It took centuries to convince people their money was more secure in a bank than under a mattress; convincing them they should trade ownership foraccess rights will take some time’. But this is the logical way to go.


At Bitmenu, we have designed our systems to recognize rights, files and transactions as separate things.  This means the comments of a college student can be contemplated.

From a college student’s perspective, if the proper actors who see the profit take action, I for one will gladly step up and purchase rights to an etextbook that won’t be made completely obsolete in three months when they come out with a new edition. I am liking the idea already… And then I can re-sell those rights–they may even appreciate while I own them!